Minor Angels

This title comes from Antoine Volodine comes a deeply disturbing and darkly hilarious novel whose full meaning, its author asserts, will be found not in the book's pages but in the dreams people will have after reading it. In "Minor Angels" Volodine depicts a post-cataclysmic world in which the forces of capitalism have begun to reestablish themselves. Sharply opposed to such a trend, a group of crones confined to a nursing home - all of them apparently immortal - resolves to create an avenging grandson fashioned of lint and rags. Though conjured to crush the rebirth of capitalism, the grandson is instead seduced by its charms - only to fall back into the hands of his creators, where he manages to forestall his punishment by reciting one "narract" a day. It is these narracts, or prose poems, that comprise the text of "Minor Angels". A French writer of Slavic origins, born in 1950, Antoine Volodine has published twelve books, which have proven difficult to categorize since they blend science fiction, "Tibetan myth", a ludic approach to writing, and a profound humanistic idealism. "Minor Angels" was awarded the Prix France Inter in 2000. Jordan Stump is an associate professor of French at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. An award-winning translator of numerous books, including Christian Oster's "My Big Apartment" (Nebraska 2002), he is also the author of "Naming and Unnaming: On Raymond Queneau" (Nebraska 1998).